Latest Gear Live Videos

Sony is currently planning an iTunes-style store for movies. The store would feature Sony Pictures’ top 500 films, available in different formats. Sony wants be sure people are able to take their films where ever they want to take them – be it on their cell phones or their Playstation Portable. Currently, Sony is doing their homework – researching prices, technology, and security. However, they plan on launching the store some time next year. It will definitely be great to have a greater selection of films readily available for the PSP without having to jump through hoops converting the movies.

Advertisement

The Hilton family of hotels will be introducing a new alarm clock this Spring. The clocks will have an MP3 jack, which will allow you to plug in your digital music player to listen to your tracks on the radio. The clock also features four preset music buttons, if you are feeling a bit more random. In conjunction with the launch of the new alarm clocks, the Hilton is also having a nice sized giveaway as well. You can enter at their site, or download their Virtual Alarm Clock, which will tell you when to check back to enter in all four contest phases. They are pushing this one with the iPod twist, and as such, they are giving away a total of 251 iPod mini’s along with a bunch of iTunes music.

So this program called PearPC allows you to run Mac OS X on your Windows-based computer (or Microsoft Xbox). People complained of the agonizing slowness of the platform, and CherryOS announced that they planned on doing it the right way. Well, CherryOS came out, and it was also slow. Upon further inspection, it turns out that CherryOS basically stole a bunch of code straight out of PearPC to build their own software. We should have known something was up when they also named their product after a fruit. Nonetheless, PearPC is now asking for monetary help in suing the CherryOS people. If you care, go ahead and show a little support.

Okay, so a year or so ago Microsoft was ordered to remove Windows Media Player from all Windows XP operating systems they intended on selling in the European Union by way of an order in an antitrust suit. Originally, Microsoft wanted to call the unbundled version"Windows XP Reduced Media Edition”. The EU didn’t like that, because they thought it would mislead consumers and slow sales. Well, that meant it was time for Microsoft to put the old thinking cap back on, and they came up with a doozy. The final name of the stripped down OS will be “Windows XP Home Edition N” and “Windows XP Professional Edition N”. The “N” stands for “not with media player.” Awesome.

Sony has been ordered by the US court to pay up $90 million in damages and halt Playstation and Playstation 2 sales in the US due to patent infringement.

SCE said it will continue US sales of the products ordered to be halted, which include PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles, two game controllers and 47 software titles, as the court order will not go into effect before until Sony’s appeal. Sony will also be paying compulsory license fees to Immersion, the company who filed suit, an SCE spokeswoman said.

Immersion, a California-based developer of tactile feedback technology, claimed Sony Computer Entertainment infringed on its technologies that make a game controller vibrate in sync with actions in games.

Back in July we told you about Duke University giving iPods to all freshmen coming in. Well, the school has reported back with a few interesting paces on a page dedicated to their iPod program. The page has information on why the program was started, as well as the different projects that have come about through the program. While this is all nice, I think it is fair to say that most student just use their Duke-supplied iPod as an MP3 player - and not much more.

The NBA has announced a non-exclusive agreement with EA, Take-Two, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Midway and Atari. What this means is more video game choices for sports games fanatics and more competition. This comes as great news since EA has been snatching up exclusive deals with the NFL and the AFL. There is no doubt that NBA video games will be bigger and better thanks to this deal. One thing that sticks out to me, though, is that Sony is the only first party developer to get in on this. Full press release after the jump.

Flickr, the massively popular online photo sharing community, was acquired by Yahoo! on March 20th. Expect to see a vast addition of features starting with an increase storage space, and the ability to log into the site using a Yahoo! ID. According to the flickr blog, pro account owners will get a special treat as a thank you for paying for the service. Prices are also expected to drop in the months to come. We look forward to seeing what Yahoo! can do with this popular community we all have grown to love.

In another wonderful turn of events, it appears that Apple wanted to charge companies who want to use the Made for iPod seal on their products 10% of the retail price on each item sold. After someone realized that this idea probably wouldn’t fly, Apple changed its stance - now they only want 10% of the wholesale price. This is all probably because the iPod has been such a failure, and Apple has made barely anything on the rogue device. Charging a whopping 10% of the wholesale price just might help move the iPod into the mainstream market, while helping to get its name out there. Right.

At the Strategic Account Summit, Microsoft’s answer to Google AdWords was introduced – MSN adCenter. This prototype is designed to help advertisers generate more revenue with the ability to connect to the desired audience throughout the MSN network. The new technology will provide advertisers in depth audience details such as geographic location, gender, age group, lifestyle segment and time of day – thus being able to generate more clicks. Microsoft did not provide many details on how the technology is able to obtain such statistics. Seems that as advertising technology is improved, our privacy seems to diminish as well.